Carrefour
by Nakirikiri
Summary: Team 7 try again. [time travel/canon divergence au]
1. Chapter 1

A/N:hope urhaving a nice day? ﾟﾍﾥ? 

* * *

Naruto wakes with the phantom taste of blood in his mouth and a scream stuck in his throat. It is not the slow swim to consciousness that he had indulged in as a child — and he's still a child, by some civilian standards — but rather a short, sharp jerk that drags him into the waking world.

His senses are scrambled, everything suddenly too bright and blurred, like trying to see into a pond disturbed by hundreds of tiny ripples. It's not just his eyes; it's his sense of smell, his hearing, and even the sensation of touch escapes him, slips away like fine sand between his fingers, to the point where he's not sure if he's lying down or standing up, or dangling upside down by his ankles. The worst of it, the thing that almost turns his stomach, is that his ever-present awareness of chakra is just. Gone. For a second, maybe less, and then it comes back all jumbled and wrong just like his other senses, barely relevant in the scheme of things if he thinks about it. And yet. For less than a second, he'd been completely cut off from everything that made him... Whole? Real?

A shadow comes into Naruto's periphery, sight being the fastest sense to return to him after his chakra. Without hesitation, he attacks. He's vulnerable like this, so vulnerable that the enemy would have to be idiots not to kill him while they had the chance, and the fact that he's not dead suggests that they're dumb enough to think they can hold him. He barely has time to be surprised that his hands aren't bound before he delivers a strike directly at where he assumes is his captor's neck.

Or, he tries to. His palm thrust is swiftly smacked away by the wrist.

"Naruto, calm down! It's me!" Naruto freezes mid-followup punch, and realises, belatedly, that he just tried to kill Sakura.

Naruto attempts to sit up instinctively and finds that his way is blocked by a firm but gentle hand pressing against his chest. "Don't," comes Sakura's voice. "If you vomit on my lap, there'll be hell to pay." Off to the side, someone snorts.

"Wha's happn'ing?" Naruto croaks out. His throat is drier than sandpaper. "Sas'ke?" It's just about his second coherent thought since regaining consciousness, and it pushes his brain into overdrive with half-remembered scenarios that he has envisioned since the fighting began. Sasuke, dead at the hands of enemies while Naruto is fighting on a different front, Sasuke going missing; never to be found again, Sasuke taking a blow, a knife, a jutsu meant for him.

A hand clamps over Naruto's mouth. "Breathe, Naruto," Sakura commands. "With me, now." And she counts, and Naruto breathes, because his limbs are numb again, and he can barely see, and Sakura's steady heartbeat and voice are some of the only things keeping him grounded.

"Good," says Sakura. She slowly withdraws her hand. "I'm here. We're safe. Sasuke is safe." That's... that's good. Safe. Yes. Safe is good. Too good? It only occurs to Naruto now that this could all be a very, very elaborate genjutsu combined with sensory deprivation seals.

Someone touches the inside of Naruto's wrist before he even has time to formulate a proper escape plan, and there's a rush of chakra, so achingly familiar that he almost chokes—

"Sa–" He coughs, swallows thickly, tries again; "Sasuke?" Naruto's vision terrible as it is, clears enough so that he can make out distinct white shapes cast against a blue backdrop.

There's a beat of silence, and then; "Hnn. We made it, dumb-ass."

What?

"We did it," Sakura says shakily. Naruto tastes rich, freshly turned earth, and the sweet scent of dewy grass, and perhaps most telling of all is what he cannot smell: death, ashes—war. "It worked, Naruto. We—we're back."


	2. Chapter 2

Naruto doesn't have, cannot have had, hiraishin markers in Konoha. Sakura will remind him of this later, ever practical in the face of disaster, and in the same breath she will shoulder the blame for not being efficient enough with her chakra, though she had healed as many as she could to the point of exhaustion.

"Fuck, fuck!" Naruto hisses under his breath, voice slightly muffled by his mask. Smoke billows thick at the site of several explosive katon jutsu, signalling the wildfire they left behind, and freshly spilled blood hangs pungent in the air. They're late, they're too late.

Uchiha Mikoto is as close to dying as someone can be without being dead when they find her. She is blind, eyes torn from her lovely, smiling face, and it is this, Naruto later thinks, more than anything else, that has Sasuke (both of them) falling to his knees.

"Sakura," Naruto barely says, before she's brushing past them both, hands aglow and sparking with life-giving lightning. A low, wretched sound, perhaps the first syllables of a word, comes suddenly from somewhere behind them.

Sasuke doesn't react, but Naruto spins, kunai in hand, ready for an attack.

It's Sasuke, the one that belongs here, all of seven years old, small and darkly silhouetted against smoke-stained moonlight. Naruto relaxes his stance and slips the kunai back into its pouch. He kneels in front of Sasuke's pale, wobbling form, hands raised to demonstrate that he's unarmed, or, as unarmed as a ninja could ever be.

"Hello," Naruto says. He's so much steadier than he's supposed to be, even as something inside of him threatens to boil over and screams violence in return for violence. "I'm... I'm sorry we entered your home without permission. We mean you no harm. My friends and I are here to help."

Sasuke's soft, young face contorts into something terrible as the light of awareness enters his eyes. His gaze slides completely away from Naruto and to the scene behind him. "No," the boy says, an inhuman sound cracking the word in half. "No, no..." It's like there's an echo in the room, but it's only Sasuke's urgent, broken repetition of one word.

Naruto tenses when Sasuke starts pushing up on his arms, first crawling and then stumbling forward. It's out of a dream, or maybe more like a nightmare, that they're here and Sasuke is here, and that his face is just like Naruto remembers.

"Keep him back!" Sakura barks. Naruto snaps back to reality in time to intercept Sasuke as he barrels toward Sakura.

"No, no!" Sasuke screams, thrashing and clipping Naruto's chin with his small fist. Naruto winces but doesn't give an inch.

"Sasuke, Sasuke, please listen to me, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry this happened, I am so, so sorry." He tightens his hold on Sasuke with every apology that slips out unbidden. "We're here to help, I promise you. I promise you. You're safe now. I promise. You're safe. I'm, I'm so, so sorry. We're here. Sakura's helping her. I'm here. Please, please listen. I, please." Naruto runs the the last few words together, his throat closing up.

"Just," Sakura grits out, "Just a little more. Kami-sama, please. Please." Naruto knows that if he turns around now, he will see her glowing, her entire being surrounded by humming green healing chakra. Sasuke, their Sasuke, stumbles over to his mother and quickly begins channelling his chakra to supplement Sakura's already depleted reserves.

It's not long after this that the Sasuke in Naruto's arms stops struggling entirely, wracked with uncontrollable tremors, before falling against Naruto's chest and breaking down into full-body sobs.


	3. Chapter 3

The Fourth's offices are just as he remembers. They're escorted in by a contingent of ANBU, single file, limbs and chakra bound. What has Naruto almost staggering, falling to his knees, is not the harshly applied chakra seals snaking along his tenketsu points, but the sheer sensory memory overload.

Viper, the ANBU guard responsible for him, pushes him forward and into the room, and at this, Naruto really does fall to his knees. It takes him a minute to gather himself. The pain on his knees feels distant. He blinks, and comes back to himself only to find that his eyes have grown conspicuously wet.

Viper says nothing, not even a grunted threat against trying to escape. They simply pull Naruto up by the collar of his jacket. Naruto goes easily. He doesn't look up immediately, doesn't want to examine why he's hesitating. He hears Sakura and Sasuke follow behind him in much the same manner, sans tripping fit.

"Leave us," comes a voice from in front of him. Naruto jerks his head up instinctively, eyes searching for the face it belongs to. His breath leaves him, and he has to clench his fists hard enough to draw blood in order to stop himself from gasping.

Viper, along with the other ANBU escort, shift silently away.

The Fourth has frozen in his chair, face pale and drawn. If Naruto had to pick a word for the expression on Sarutobi Hiruzen's wrinkled face, he would say 'haunted'.

Sakura is the first to speak. "Sarutobi-sama, I understand that the evidence relating to the charges stacked against us, though circumstantial, is damning. However, if you would allow us to explain-"

"So you deny any involvement in the massacre?" The Fourth, says, cutting her off. His eyes do not leave Naruto's, and Naruto finds that he can't quite look away either.

Naruto hears Sakura take several breaths, about to speak but rethinking her words each time.

In the end, it's Sasuke who responds. "That's not the question you want to ask."

The Fourth blinks, shifts his gaze to Naruto's left. "And what question would that be, pray tell?"

Sasuke scoffs. "If we're one of the Snake's experiments. If the man in front of you is the resurrected corpse of your successor. Take your pick."

Naruto steps forward in response to the way The Fourth almost bristles at Sasuke's provocation. It's dangerous territory when a Kage begins to lose their grasp on control. "Ji-j-" The Fourth jerks back a fraction of an inch before Naruto corrects himself. "Hokage-sama. We mean no harm to Konoha and her innocents."

Every word out of Naruto's mouth seems to cause the old man more distress, until finally, he says; "Who _are_ you?" It's soft, and rasped as if on a dying breath, older than what Naruto's memories have ever allowed him to be.

"She thinks he believes us," Naruto says into the quiet of the forest. It's too dark to see without augmented vision, but he thinks he can feel Sasuke's eyes on him. "I,' he continues, "I don't want to wait longer than the next full moon. We won't wait."

"You think so too," says Sasuke.

"Huh?" Naruto lifts his head away from the branch he'd been leaning against.

"You agree," Sasuke states simply. "You think he believes us."

"Sas-"

"Don't. You know I don't have any reason to trust him."

Naruto's sudden surge of anger is so strong that, for a moment, he's surprised by himself. "Then why are you still here?" he hisses, unable to keep the emotion out of his voice.

Nothing. Naruto goes to repeat himself, half-convinced he hadn't said anything at all, when Sasuke mutters, "Idiot."

"Oh, that is IT." Naruto growls.

"If you don't know by now, you're dumber than I thought-"

"Fine. Leave. Go hunt your brother down on your own. It wouldn't be the first time-" As soon as the words leave his mouth, Naruto regrets them. "Shit. Shit, I didn't mean that. I'm sorry, I-"

"Shut up. I know you didn't."

Any trace of apology evaporates entirely. "What, now I'm not allowed to apologise?"

"You can apologise all you like if you wake her up."

Naruto chokes on his next come-back. Right. Technically, he's supposed to be asleep as well. Sakura will murder him without hesitation if he interrupts her rest.

He adjusts his perch on the giant tree they've chosen to rest at for the night. The thought occurs to him that Sasuke never actually answered.

"Why are you still here? You said you don't trust him." After so long, Naruto knows better, he knows, but some traitorous part of him is afraid that these will be their last words, that in bringing it up he will have inadvertently reminded Sasuke of his other options.

A beat, so full, so in character for the way Sasuke chooses his words. Naruto isn't sure what he wants to hear.

"No, I don't trust him," says Sasuke, finally.

Him, in particular. Sasuke doesn't trust The Fourth. His trust in The Fourth is not what's keeping him there, it's his trust in-

Oh. _Oh._ Naruto's throat tightens. It's hardly new information, but apparently he forgot because he can't seem to keep his body from seizing up at the reminder. His face splits into a grin that hurts his cheeks.

"Sasuke?"

"What."

"Wake me up for my watch?"

"Yeah."


End file.
